


Much Too Late To Find

by orphan_account



Category: South Park RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt's trying to hold Trey together when all Trey wants to do is fall apart and then stay broken. So he's also allowed to be a little angry at Matt for not letting him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Much Too Late To Find

**It starts like this:**

"I'm getting married," Matt announces, and Trey's world narrows down to the sound of his own heart beating.

"Oh."

"I've waited long enough, Trey. You didn't even give me a choice."

"You could've not asked her," Trey suggests without even really looking Matt in the eye.

" _You_ could've asked _me_ ," Matt counters. "But you were never really an option."

"Do you love her?"

"Yes."

Trey shrugs, because what the hell's he supposed to say?

"'Kay."

"You going to be my best man?"

"If you want me to." It would probably be a good idea to stop staring down at his shoes. Any second now, he's sure he will.

"Of course I do. You're my—"

He doesn't finish it, but Trey doesn't need him to. It's a complete sentence as it is. A possessive and an object. Trey is Matt's. Any other word after that would seem superfluous.

Matt's fingers curl under his chin and tilt Trey's face up to meet Matt's.

"I'm sorry," is what he says. _You brought this on yourself,_ is what he doesn't.

"I waited, Trey. I tried— _everything_."

"I'll be your best man," Trey tells him. "Angela's…she's a really great girl."

Matt nods, then drops his hand away from Trey's face suddenly, like it started to burn.

"I'm going to go tell some of the guys," Matt says finally. "You're going to need help planning my awesome bachelor party."

Trey doesn't answer. There's not much else to say.

 

 **No, wait. It goes further back than that. It actually started like this:**

Trey is so drunk he can barely walk and all he wants to do is crawl under the covers and just lay there until he dies because as fucking ridiculous as he knows he's being, he also knows that Leanne left him and whatever happens now, the life he wanted—her, a house, a family—is gone forever. He's allowed to be fucking ridiculous right now.

But Matt won't let him. Matt keeps dragging him out of the house, taking him to strip joints, making him take a shower. Matt's trying to hold Trey together when all Trey wants to do is fall apart and then stay broken. So he's also allowed to be a little angry at Matt for not letting him.

"Fuck off," he says, pushing at Matt's shoulder. Matt sighs, takes both of Trey's hands in his, and holds them apart so that Trey can't use them anymore. He thinks, distantly, that if he were sober, he'd be able to figure this out enough to take them out of Matt's control, but the alcohol keeps telling him he's helpless, hopeless, lost, and he's inclined to agree with the sentiment.

"Just—just let me—" he starts, and Matt shakes his head.

"You'll be okay, Trey. You'll find someone else you love more than her."

Trey looks up at him, takes in the concern in Matt's eyes, the undying devotion he's had to Trey since day one. _Oh_ , he thinks, and leans up to press his lips against Matt's.

"No."

"But—please."

"Not like this."

"I need—"

"I know. But you don't want." He pauses, searching for a moment, then says, "I'm going to go get you some water and asprin. You've got class in the morning, if you sober up by then."

"Will you stay with me?" Trey asks, and after a second's hesitation, Matt nods.

Trey pats the space beside him on the bed, but Matt shakes his head and nods towards the living room. "On the couch," he clarifies. "Get some sleep, Trey."

Trey doesn't want to, but then Matt touches the side of his face, surprisingly gentle, and something settles in Trey's chest. He must fall asleep pretty quickly after that, because the next time he opens his eyes, it's nine AM and the promised water and asprin are sitting beside his bed with a note written in Matt's neat handwriting.

 

 **Twenty years later, this happens:**

"How you holding up?"

Trey takes another swig of his beer and shrugs. He's fine. Totally.

"I'm okay."

"You look like shit."

"Fuck you, Eric."

Eric drops into the seat next to him and sighs.

"You're not exactly subtle, Trey. Your wife's looks like she's about to kill puppies."

"I'm fine. Emma's fine."

"Please. The love of your life just married a goddess who's as kind as she is beautiful and you're sitting here alone at the reception getting wasted. You're not fine."

"Matt's not the—"

Eric just stares at him, so Trey stops talking.

"I never understood why you two didn't just—"

Trey shrugs. "I just thought—I wanted to get married. Have a family. I thought—I really love my wife, Eric."

"I never said you didn't."

"Right, but the thing is…I love her and it's not enough. It's not enough because she's not Matt. She tries so fucking hard and I hate myself and—" He cuts himself off and takes another drink of his beer. "He waited. He wanted."

"And you? What do you want?"

Trey shrugs and finishes off the rest of his beer in one go. "I want another drink," is all he says, and Eric doesn't say a word to stop him.

 

 **It gets worse when:**

It's a vice, left over from his bachelor days, and most of the time, Emma swears she doesn't mind. It's one of his favorite things about her—she's not uptight or a prude and she doesn't care if he watches porn or goes to strip joints; her only rule is against touching. Trey can look all he wants, and as long as he doesn't physically cheat, she just smiles and welcomes him home with open arms even when he smells like cigarettes and cheap beer.

But he's touching this time. He's got a girl, pretty in a plain sort of way—nothing like his wife's striking beauty—straddling his lap and grinding against him as much as the club's laws allow. She's rocking against him to the beat that's thumping out of the speakers, moving like she's connected to the music itself, and she reaches back to curl one hand around his chin. She tilts his face up from where he's staring at her ass so that he meets her eyes instead and grins at him, almost shy. He stares back, transfixed, until she leans back, settling fully on his lap, and presses her lips to his ear.

"I get off at three," she tells him, and then pushes up off his lap. He can still feel her fingers on his chin two hours later while he's waiting for her outside the club. Her hands weren't anything like Matt's at all, her fingers too delicate to compare, but it was enough to send him back to a year and a half ago when Matt had done the same thing and apologized for something he never should've been sorry for.

"You wanna get out of here?" she asks when she steps out onto the street a few minutes later. "We could grab a coffee."

"Sure," Trey says, even though coffee's the last thing on his mind. "I never got your name, by the way. Your real one."

"Bogie," she says, and after a moment, he realizes she's not joking.

"Really?"

"Yeah. My parents clearly intended for me to excel at my chosen profession." She slips her hand into his and smiles up at him. "Come on. There's a Starbucks down the street."

Two hours later, she's on her knees and he's fucking her hard from behind, fueled half by caffeine and half by anger—at himself, at Matt, at Angela, he doesn't know—and she's moaning like stripping isn't the only sex-related work she gets paid to do.

Two nights after that, she brings coke with her when she stops by after work and Trey doesn't even hesitate before he rails it.

 

 **And then it all goes to hell because:**

Trey fucking loves karaoke. He loves laughing at the jackasses who can't sing and he loves listening to the ones who can. He loves getting plastered and making an ass of himself with a drunken rendition of "I Wanna Know What Love Is" or some equally cheesy 80's song. It's kind of his guilty pleasure.

So it's not the first time he's dragged his friends out to his favorite karaoke bar, but it is the first time he's brought along Bogie. His friends are still getting used to her and half the time he can feel their judgement like a physical entity, but he's too stoked to care because karaoke's _awesome_ , Bogie's _awesome_ , and Trey himself feels really fucking _awesome_ tonight, too. Which may or may not have had anything to do with Bogie swinging by his place half an hour before they left for the bar, already holding out the plastic baggie that accompanies her everywhere.

So the first time there's an opening, Trey grabs Matt's hand and starts tugging him to the stage.

"Come on," he pleads. "Come sing with me."

"Trey—What about Bogie?"

"She can't sing. Come on, we sound great together. It'll be awesome. I need the Jesus to my Santa Claus."

Matt rolls his eyes, but lets Trey tug him up to the stage anyway, and Trey knows what song they're going to sing before he even gets halfway there. They need this. _Matt_ needs it. Maybe he'll get it after Trey sings it to him. Maybe he'll finally fucking understand and everything will stop being so fucked up between them.

He bounces on his toes while he waits for the music to cue up, and indicates to Matt that he'll take the first verse. Matt shrugs his agreement and passes Trey the mic an employee just handed him, and Trey cheats his body half-out to the audience so that he can look Matt right in the eye and still perform. _God damn_ , he's a good director. This probably looks awesome.

In front of them, the monitor starts scrolling the words along with the music and Trey clears his throat before beginning to sing.

 _You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar  
When I met you  
I picked you out, I shook you up, and turned you around  
Turned you into someone new_

Matt rolls his eyes, and there's even a hint of amusement there. But it's not funny. It's really fucking not and Trey glares at him as he sings the next lines.

 _Now five years later on you've got the world at your feet  
Success has been so easy for you  
But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now  
And I can put you back down too_

Matt's eyebrow shoots up practically into his hairline, and then he's glaring right back at Trey.

 _Don't, don't you want me?  
You know I can't believe it when I hear that you won't see me  
Don't, don't you want me?  
You know I don't believe you when you say that you don't need me  
It's much too late to find  
You think you've changed your mind  
You'd better change it back or we will both be sorry_

 _Don't you want me, baby? Don't you want me oh  
Don't you want me, baby? Don't you want me_

He moves to offer the mic to Matt so Matt can join him on the last word of the chorus before he takes over on the second verse, but Matt pushes past him off the stage and goes storming through the bar, clearly headed for the door. Trey utters a stunned, " _Oh_ ," right along with the chorus, and then drops the mic to the ground as he takes off after Matt.

He nearly kills the patrons of the bar, pushing them out of his way and growling out insults at anyone who gets angry. He catches sight of Matt throwing the front door open and running out into the night and Trey knocks over a kid who looks far too young to be there as he follows. The cool night air sobers him up a little, but it doesn't do much for the coke running through his system, and he shouts down the street at Matt's retreating form.

"What the fuck, Matt? What's your fucking problem?"

He regrets it as soon as Matt turns back to him, livid in a way Trey's never seen him before.

It takes fifteen seconds for Matt to return to the spot on which Trey stands, and as far as Trey can tell, Matt gets angrier and angrier as each and every one of them ticks by.

"I'm _married_ ," Matt hisses at him. "I've got a fucking _wife_ , Trey. Don't you _dare_ pull a stunt like that again."

"It wasn't a stunt. It was the truth."

"The truth? How coked up does she have you, Trey? I waited twenty years for you to want me so don't you fucking _dare_ try to pin this one on me."

"But you don't anymore. You don't want me."

"Trey, have you ever even listened to the lyrics of that song? It's about a guy who pulled a girl out of obscurity and now he expects her to put out or else he'll put her right back there. _You_ made me famous? Try we both worked our asses off together. Try I'm the one who saved every single project you've ever working on from falling into financial and logistical ruin. Try we were partners. Hell, try we were _friends_. And you'll put me back down if I don't put out? Thanks, Trey. Good to fucking know."

"I—I didn't—"

"Of course you didn't. You don't think anything through these days. You just assume it's going to work because you're Trey Fucking Parker and you have a way of getting shit done except you don't, do you? _I'm_ the one who gets the shit done. _I'm_ the one who has to make your insanity work. _I'm_ the one who has to keep you functional after you've been on a weekend bender with the stripper you left your wife for."

"That's not why I left Emma and you know it."

"I don't care, Trey!" Matt snaps. "I don't care. I don't fucking care because you had twenty years to get this shit worked out and you didn't. I'm _married_ now. I love my wife and for God only knows what reason, she loves me back, my messed up shit with you and all. I'm _happy_ , Trey. You don't get to play this card now. You can't do that to me in front of all our friends. How do you think that looked?"

"Awesome?" Trey ventures, but Matt's look quells any hope he had of that being true.

"It was _embarrassing_ ," Matt spits. "For me, but especially for you. When you come down from whatever the hell it is that you're on, you're going to regret this. I can't—fuck. I can't believe even _you_ thought that was at all a good idea."

"I'm a great singer," Trey says evenly. "And I sang karaoke to Emma at our wedding."

"Yeah, and that relationship turned out great."

Trey has a feeling he should be offended, but it's true, so he just stands there, waiting.

"What do you _want_ from me, Trey?"

"I just…I don't know." He takes both of Matt's hands in his and looks up at him, and suddenly he's twenty years old again, drowning in his own misery and Matt is his only lifeline. He tilts his head up once again, tries to close the distance between their mouths, but it seems like Matt is twenty years old again, too.

"No," Matt says, even more firmly than he did that day in Trey's shithole of an apartment.

"But—please."

"I told you, Trey. I told you in college. Not while you were drunk and not now when you're too coked up to care. All you had to do was want me just _once_ while you were sober, and you couldn't even manage that."

"But I did," Trey insists. "I always did and—"

Matt wrests his hands out of Trey's grip and the look in his eyes is pure pity.

"I can't do this, Trey. I can't. I waited for you for twenty years and you never got your act together. You're not allowed to play the victim now."

"But—"

"I'm sorry," is what he says. "You brought this on yourself," is how he finishes it.

 

 _fin_


End file.
